Book stirs furor over Bush team

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Book stirs furor over Bush team
Bob Woodward paints picture of Cabinet sorely divided over Rumsfeld, Iraq war
Peter Baker, Washington Post

Saturday, September 30, 2006


(09-30) 04:00 PDT Washington -- New revelations that White House aides tried twice in the past two years to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fueled a caustic election-season debate Friday over the president's wartime leadership and underscored divisions within his administration.

The latest book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, "State of Denial," paints a portrait of an administration riven by personal and policy disagreements exacerbated by a deteriorating situation in Iraq that has grown even worse than Bush admits to the public. In Woodward's account, Bush has become increasingly isolated as his team rejected advice to shift gears in Iraq before it was too late.

On Friday, the White House tried to dismiss the significance of Woodward's reporting while Democrats eagerly seized on it to bolster their campaign attacks five weeks before hotly contested midterm elections. Coming days after the partial release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that the Iraq conflict has spread the "global jihadist movement," the latest disclosures kept the focus on the missteps and consequences of an unpopular war.

The book reports that then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card twice suggested that Bush fire Rumsfeld and replace him with former Secretary of State James Baker, first after the November 2004 election and again around Thanksgiving 2005. Card had the support of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor, Condoleezza Rice, as well as National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and senior White House adviser Michael Gerson, according to the book.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/30/MNGPALFPKD1.DTL

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1. WaPo: 'State of Denial' Lands Early And Hits Harder

'State of Denial' Lands Early And Hits Harder
Bob Woodward at Center of Whirlwind Over Latest Book

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 30, 2006; Page C01

The impassioned debate that seems to surround each new book by Bob Woodward burst into public view yesterday, two days ahead of schedule.

The unveiling of "State of Denial," Woodward's latest take on the Bush administration's struggle with the conflict in Iraq, scrambled the usual media alliances. The New York Times ran a front-page exclusive on a book by a journalist for The Washington Post -- which begins running excerpts tomorrow -- and Brian Williams led "NBC Nightly News" with a story based on advance tidbits put out by CBS's "60 Minutes," which airs its Woodward interview tomorrow.

For several years now, liberal critics have been denigrating Woodward as a high-level stenographer for an administration they detest, even as his last two books have also revealed information that embarrassed the White House. But this new volume -- written, unlike the others, without access to President Bush -- has media and political circles buzzing about whether the one-time Watergate sleuth has suddenly gotten tougher on the administration.

"I found out new things, as is always the case when you re-plow old ground," Woodward said. "The bulk of them I discovered this year. I wish I'd had some of them for the earlier books, but I didn't."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901655.html